To Jest The Just
How excessive seriousness gets us all killed
Reading time: 8 minutes
A ruler without a jester is like day without night; too much of only one creates unbalance, sickness and death, yet the balance of both creates health and life.
The image of the old court jester seems as familiar as that of castles and divinities; the distinct cap and bells costume immediately evokes a complete image in our minds of a funny medieval character with the capability of making people laugh.
The jester Triboulet for instance worked primarily for King Francis I of France during the early 16th century, and he sought to find humour in almost any situation. His sharp wit however nearly cost him his head when he slapped the king on his butt in front of a room full of courtiers. Francis offered him an out, however, if he could come up with an apology more offensive than the spanking. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, that I didn’t recognize you!” Triboulet reportedly said. “I mistook you for the Queen!”
Here we immediately see the ability – and permission – of jesters to speak their mind in the presence of kings and rulers. Coming usually from the lower classes, they bring a different perspective and often, a vital detachment. So even though their verbal attacks can be biting, there is an undercurrent of good-heartedness and understanding to their words. Therefore the king-jester relationship is often amiable and close, and the jester is most of the time a cherished rather than a tolerated presence.
Coming from lower classes makes the jester much more able to sincerely converse with a monarch, instead of courtiers who struggle for positions and wish to please the ruler in the hope to gain favours. Image: Momentmal
Moreover, in this capacity they remind leaders of their humanity. If they can talk the monarch out of burning an innocent at the stake, it isn’t just to save the innocent from the king’s wrath but also to save the king from himself. They are the only ones who can tell the king he’s suffering from moral bad breath.
There is however in modern society not a single institution that corresponds to the court jester. There are political cartoonists, political commentators, or stand-up comedians, but these do not sit in the offices of the powerful. Elites can therefore choose to ignore critical feedback all together, which they have been doing rather obviously for the last couple of centuries but increased dramatically in the last five decades.
When our leaders shut themselves off to any sounds they deem ‘annoying’ or ‘undesirable’, it’s not surprising that most of us adopt a similar attitude. Aversion to and poor handling of criticism have therefore become widespread phenomena among most of us and manifests itself, among other things, when our social institutions are being held under scrutiny, or, God forbid, mocked.
A social institution is basically everything that we agree upon and becomes conventional. Marriage and family are therefore social institutions, as are nations, governments and governmental institutions. But also banks, hospitals, businesses, money, language, geography, time, weights and measures, are all social institutions. They are conventions by which we can live together relatively orderly in complex societies.
Many of us however have forgotten that our social institutions are a result of human agreements, and are therefore of a living nature. The nature of life is change and everything that comes up, eventually must come down. Yet with industrialization and technologization of our societies, small nations as well as small businesses are assimilated into bureaucratic behemoths of which we are made to believe that it’s the worst thing imaginable if they fail. Because if they do, according to most bureaucrats, our prosperity and standards of living will regress back into the stone age. Yet we never hear them talk about our wellbeing.
For some reason these types of buildings never came across like bastions of merriment, or freedom, for that matter. Image: serbuxarev
It is no wonder then that we become so serious when it comes to protecting and maintaining our social institutions. Anyone who suggests that they are something that occasionally needs to be giggled at, is regarded as subversive and therefore dangerous because we’re much too insecure and anxious. That is a dangerous state of affairs, for if seriousness is not counterweighed by folly now and then, we will bury ourselves in trenches where only like-minded people are welcome. The less open we are to different opinions then our own, the sooner we convince ourselves of the righteousness to exterminate them because of their supposed danger to society. Therefore criticism needs to be stifled completely, and the worst kind of criticism comes from the person who pokes fun.
The more so when a jester is not outright deriding things but compassionately gives us the giggles about things we think are terribly sacred, like modern day jesters Joe Rogan and Ricky Gervais for example. It’s exactly their good-heartedness which empowers their criticism about the overly seriousness of our social institutions, especially since a child can see that they have developed into total irrationality and chaos. Yet most adults have been bamboozled into believing in the omniscience and omnipotence of our leadership and social institutions, and that is why poking fun at them is so demoralizing.
To the jester however, all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game-playing, and that is why, when people take their game extremely seriously and put on stern and pious expressions, the jester gets the giggles, because he knows it’s all a game. Yet that doesn’t mean mere game, it’s more that the jester deeply understands that the only goal of life is life itself. Life is a dance and the jester looks both with amazement and compassion at those of us who don’t want to, can’t, or don’t dare to dance.
Moreover, the jester sees the complete and total interconnectedness and interdependence of the totality of existence. Every being, thing, and event that’s going on is all part of one process, and it’s all a game with no other object that to do what it’s doing. The process plays parts, it varies itself, and playing always has a certain element of make-belief, of illusion (from the Latin ‘ludere’, meaning to play). Therefore it involves the illusion of the parts being separate, which becomes manifest in our desire to obtain the good and avoid the bad. We have come to believe that in reality things and events are separated and should remain so, which becomes obvious when we investigate the biggest game of all, the one that we’re continually playing: the social institution known as ‘I’.
We all know how it feels having to play different roles at different times and places. Yet what remains hidden from sight is how we are being prepared for the role of ‘I’ from the day we’re born. Terms like ‘growing up’ and ‘settling down’ mean that we surrender and adapt to a certain system. As long as we show a particular kind of behaviour, we are recognized and accepted by others in the system. But if we do not, then, as a rule, we’re being ousted.
If we don’t play the assigned roles by the anonymus society, we will be ousted by our loved ones. Image: pixabay
In actuality we are being trained our whole life to act, only we call it ‘education’ and ‘upbringing.’ We ought to learn how to play the role to which our name is attached, and so I realize clearly that I am now playing the part of Erik Stout. To my environment Erik ought to behave in such a such a way so as to be predictable. But the more I try to ‘fit in’ by means of learned behavior and repress unfavorable traits that are nonetheless also a part of my organism (like curiosity), the more I split myself up and move towards a mental and physical breakdown.
Our learned behavior marks the generally accepted version of ‘I,’ and harbors our qualities. Behavior that falls outside of the accepted version harbors our faults and should forever remain hidden. Instead of understanding, like the jester does, that these are not two distinct parts but merely two aspects of the same whole, we try to keep them separate as much as possible instead of directing our energy into reconciling them. This principle can be applied to any game that we get too serious about.
For the more frantic we bite our teeth into (or: identify with) a particular game – be it I-myself, our family, work, country, religion, race, or ideas – the more serious we approach it and the less we see how it interconnects with the rest of our environment. Then the jester gets the giggles - but not out of malice! He sees the incredible fine tightrope we’re balancing on, which represents our collective neurosis for having completely forgotten that the game is a game. His giggles arise therefore much more out of a combination of admiration for how far out we are getting lost in our game, and compassion for our collective inability to relax.
The jester knows better than anyone how great it is to get lost in games. The whole purpose of any game is to get lost in it, to feel the excitement as though it were real. But he also knows when it’s time to quit, just like chess players abandon the game if they both see that white will mate in five moves. It is exactly in that realm that we experience big problems when our deep belief tells us that our games, the culmination of which is ‘I-myself’, must go on indefinitely. We then get overly serious and rigid in our thinking and behavior, opening the door for stress and the emergence of all kinds of physical and mental ailments – and not just for ourselves. Yet as much as the jester perceives our folly, he understands that we’re mere victims of our own ignorance. Therefore his giggles are compassionate rather than malicious.
The art of knowing when to quit is one of the most valuable tools for a healthy and happy life. Image: moritz320
In that sense he is not a rebel or revolutionary. His detached stance allows him to take the side of the underdog in order to curb the excesses of the system without ever trying to overthrow it. His purpose is not to replace one system with another, but to free us from the chains of all systems. He bears in that respect more resemblance to a spiritual teacher than a mere crazy person, and it would be the sign of a society returning to health if the cap and bells were to be reinstated among the stuffy business suits who currently, solely and depressingly solemn, dominate the realms of power. Because the moral superiority which naturally follows their adamantine feelings of righteousness, have demonstrated again and again in history to bring nothing but destruction and misery.
The only way out of the maddening rat-race is to become a jester ourselves. As an individual we can’t change our current, rigid systems or the inhuman and alienating behemoths that our governments and businesses have become. Yet the powers that be are scared stiff if too many of us awaken to ‘jesterhood’ and actually become reasonable, wise, and human in our outlook and approach to life. When we begin, therefore, to combine our intellectual knowledge with real life experiences, we can gain the wisdom we need to re-learn to trust ourselves. And that inevitably means we do not need the guidance of others anymore to live a fulfilling and meaningful life.
Every sane person knows that a population able to trust itself actually leads to a human way of life. Unfortunately, most of us are raised far from sane – and I grew up to be one. Yet the sincere effort in learning to see the world from the jester’s perspective - i.e. as it is - is responsible for insights I would not have thought possible. Insights through which deep fears are overcome, creating balance in mind and body, and providing the confidence to leave my known world in The Netherlands behind to learn Tai Chi in China.
My wish for you is that you go and find out about your own unique talents and innate predispositions. For not only will that inevitably provide a sense of meaning and purpose to your life, but in learning to see both ourselves and life as it is, as opposed to how we want to see them, the need for control completely falls away. And when we have liberated ourselves from the chains of our self-made prisons, we can play any role at any time, just like the jester can be any card in the deck.
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
This blogpost originated from parts of the Alan Watts lecture ‘The Joker’ and the book “Jokers Are Everywhere; The Court Jester Around The World” by Beatrice K. Otto.
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